The Display
by Singer of Time
Summary: A drabble inspired by a particular scene in Portal 2. On their way to confront GLaDOS, Chell and Wheatley stop before a haunting spectacle from Aperture's past. Chell suddenly seems to find herself reliving a lost memory...


((AN: And now for another short Portal 2-inspired drabble; because I freaking love this game. x3 I had to wonder about the Bring Your Daughter to Work Day displays and Chell's reaction to finding her own among them, as you can do in the game.))

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><p><span>The Display<span>

"'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day'. That did _not_ end well."

Chell followed her companion's voice, a comparatively cheery echo in the otherwise eerie and grim darkness of Aperture's abandoned and dusty back halls, through a room that to her seemed half-office and half-classroom. Inside, desks were lined up neatly to face an open screen, though there was no projector to be seen. In the back, boxes and filing cabinets were stowed, and like the many times she'd roamed the offices, she wondered if there was even anything in them.

The arrow on the wall had pointed her along the only route that would bring her back to following the chatty Personality Core, through the Employee Daycare Center. As her boots made a slow and measured rhythm over the floor, kicking up years of dust in their wake, her eyes scanned the room with as much curiosity as conviction. A shudder crawled up her spine at the thought that, once, there had been _children _in that awful place.

The silence was encompassing here. Even though the facility hummed with artificial life all around her in a dull tone, and even though she could still hear the jabber of the turret line somewhere behind, there seemed to be an air of solemnity in this part of the hallway. It was the kind of silence that was carried with the wind through a graveyard or a long-abandoned battlefield. Both apt comparisons to Aperture Laboratories, where humans once stood where she stood. Saw what she saw. Never to know their fate.

Suppressing another shudder, Chell hefted the somewhat comforting weight of the portal gun in her hands and moved onward through the door with a cautious ear to her surroundings. Although the girl had followed Wheatley into the back areas of the facility where _She_ probably couldn't see—one of the rare and blessed blind spots found in a murderous A.I.'s unpredictable domain—there could never be too much care taken. _She_ could be lying in wait, anywhere, anytime. There was nowhere truly safe to run. Places to hide would be found sooner or later.

Still, her strong, lifesaving will wasn't to be deterred, not yet and not ever. Having once more escaped Her gauntlet of tests (and it was certain that she'd remember to thank Wheatley for his help in that aspect), they were now on their way to once again shut Her down for good and escape; the plan was threefold and seemingly simple enough: disable the turrets. Shut off the neurotoxin generator. Confront Her.

Part one of the plan was successful, and Chell couldn't help but smirk with grim satisfaction whenever one of the defective turrets triumphantly crowed somewhere off in the distance.

Part two was just up ahead, according to the little robot sphere. But as she ventured through the office/classroom door and into the next section, she followed his curious and bright gaze to the spectacle before them. Her eyebrows rose, and the portal device was lowered.

Standing in a neat row along the wide, dark hall were several raised picture board displays like one would find at a school science fair. Illuminated only by Wheatley's optic, a computer-font banner hung above the displays with the very words that he had read, advertising a day long past.

Chell faintly remembered that _She_ had mentioned a 'Bring Your Daughter to Work Day' while first running her through the facility. At the time she was more focused on the tasks presented to her, finishing them off as quickly and efficiently as possible, than listening to the broken monotone of the domineering voice.

But having recalled that moment, and seeing the banner while hearing the core's unsettled tone, a disturbing weight settled in her stomach. Had the day been significant in some way?

Wheatley hadn't elaborated. He'd gone on to look at each of the displays, each done by a different child in different ranges of creativity, easily finding something to say on them all the while. It made her shake her head in amusement, how he sounded rather like a science fair judge. She slowly moved along the row, taking in the construction-paper numbers and crayon-writings with her own eyes. All of them had the same project (save one): a potato battery. The potatoes were pretty much all old and rotted, no longer powering their various little devices.

With each glance over the dusty and faded (though somehow preserved) displays, it seemed that Chell could imagine being there in her mind's eye when the scene was new; several hopeful children milling around the windows of an active daycare center, daughters of scientists or engineers or even just desk clerks, waiting proudly with their creations to show that they, too, could do Science. So many voices, the forced cheer of the adults and the pure and true curiosity of the children, were there in her imagination and making ever more stark the difference of the dark view before her.

She was startled out of her musings when they reached the very last display at the end of the row. The view of the board was completely blocked in favor of a simply _massive _root tuber sitting on the table, with several tendrils winding into points down on the floor at her feet and with even more impressive branches reaching high above. Leaves and moss covered the walls and forced tiles up ahead as a result, as if the potato had been the forbear of an ecosystem.

Wheatley was just as impressed. "Lookit that, it's grown right up into the ceiling! The whole place is probably overrun with potatoes at this point, isn't it? Least you won't starve, though."

It was no small wonder that Chell could smell potatoes when she'd first wandered into the overgrowth of the upper levels of the facility (and he was right about not starving; she'd probably never eat another potato again when she finally escaped). It was quite a feat for a small root vegetable to have accomplished in however long it had been there. It was as if it had taken one look at its companions and said, "I won't rot away like these; I'll grow into a forest."

Chell smiled at the thought. If there was one thing she understood, it was tenacity. A plant could be a small thing at first and then grow to split rocks...climb walls...crack tile. It could overthrow the gray and dull order of humanity and technology, and all in silence. Like herself.

Wheatley had stopped speaking; perhaps, she thought, he was still nonplussed at the striking display. He was patient as she stepped forward to further inspect the rest of it hidden behind the trunk of the tuber.

The neatly-written crayon letters seemed to strike a chord in her memory, and for a moment it seemed that she really _was_ back at the scene and _could_ hear all the voices, a mixed cacophony of emotion and interest. The thick smell of dust and root assailed her nostrils, yet for a moment it was blocked with a memory of smelling a clean, disinfected laboratory hallway.

And then when she stepped around to read down to the right-hand corner of the display, the words there hit her mind like a freight train.

"By Chell."

She was frozen to that spot, reading her name over and over again in what she suddenly _knew_ had been her handwriting once. There was no second-guessing, as her brain was firing quick successions of memories of _her hand _writing all of it down; she _knew_ that this old project, this logic-defying potato, was _hers._ And yet, there were doubts, questions, reservations that hung in the back of her mind about it; memories that were scattered and lost due to a long time in sleep and sequestered away, as locked to her as her own voice.

_How can it be? Why? Was I here?_

_"Dad! Here's my potato; do you think they'll like it?"_

_ ...I can't remember..._

_"What's that loud noise? What's going on? Dad?"_

..._No...I can..._

_"It's Her, She's in the system! Take the kids out of here!"_

_ ...I was..._

_"Everyone out!"_

_A strange smell...screaming..._

_ "Oh god, it's pouring out of the vents! Don't breathe! Run!"_

_Run..._

_ "Run!"_

_ Run...!_

_ "RUN!"_

_ RUN...!_

"Uh, hello? Lady? _Hey!_"

Like out of a nightmare, Chell's whole body snapped up, and her head jerked upward. She'd gasped with but a bare fraction of her voice, and now she was trying to regain her hollow breathing. The portal gun had fallen at her feet, and her arms were straight, propping her upper body over flat, shaking hands.

She was back in the darkness and silence of the hall, her immediate surroundings lit by the soothing light of Wheatley's optic, and the small robot was trying to get her attention. He sounded concerned, and more than a little confused.

"Oh, wow, that was quite a jump...sorry, didn't mean to startle, but you'd just gone and stopped moving...you alright? You look pale...well, paler than usual, which is still pretty pale, dunno if humans are, y'know, _supposed_ to look like that, but then again...uh, anyway, what happened? Can you say, maybe? Or, well, just give me a sign that you can hear me, that'll be good..."

Chell let his waterfall voice lead her slowly out of the episode that she'd gone into, and her breathing evened out as she wiped a short few droplets of sweat from her brow. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking once more at a dark laboratory hall full of abandoned, dusty poster-board.

Not in the past. Not a room full of people and the faces of children.

Not at the exact moment when it had all gone to Hell.

In truth, she had very little memory of things that happened before she'd first woken up in Her test chambers. But every now and again, there were flashes that she'd recall; like having to give her information for testing under the duress of some anxious and—some perhaps thought sickly—scientists. She remembered their looks of disapproval at her answers and her sneer at their judgmental faces. No parents, no true human care. To her mind, her whole life was Aperture. But to her spirit and will, to the bull-headed determination that kept her alive, she _did not belong there_. And sometimes it would show more and more as the truth about That Place was slowly revealed to her through time and careful exploration.

Chell forced herself to look at her old display once again, and at the odds-defying potato. At her faded name in crayon. At the past that was presenting itself to her.

Yes. She was there. She'd run with the children, turned back, ran to look for...someone. A scientist? Help in general? Away? There were still details locked away and blurred. The next thing she knew after a long gap was being kept with other to-be test subjects in the facility.

But she had been there. When _She_ had nearly succeeded in killing off the entirety of the human population of the facility, but for a few survivors, who in vain had tried to go on with the rigid testing and a faulty pursuit of an idea of science. They had perhaps eventually become test subjects themselves, or had been among those asleep and doomed to sleep forever in the Relaxation Vaults.

She was _there._

"Hello? You haven't...erm...you haven't answered...I don't think, unless I missed it. Might have, so just in case, can you do that? Send me a sign that you can hear me? Please? I mean, we _do_ need to get moving, time being of the essence and all, but, uhm, no pressure, just wanna mention that. No pressure. Neurotoxin generator's not far at all, not far, so if you need to rest, go ahead, you know, just say, or not-say, y'know..."

His words faded into awkward silence when she let out a loud sigh, and then took another deep, calming breath in. She had to _focus._ More questions, more mysteries, more memories...they all just added to more distractions that she didn't need. There was work to be done. Her thoughts once more became linear, logical, stretched taut and archer-aimed, and the memories were shoved away to be answered later—or not, whatever was deemed necessary.

Once she was steeled, Chell reached back down for the portal gun and inspected it to make sure that it still worked.

"Oh, brilliant, you're ready now? You're okay?" Wheatley inquired, himself more anxious to leave than he was letting on.

Chell looked up and met his eye, a curt and determined nod her only answer, a smirk curling her otherwise firmly-pressed lips. Turning toward the door, she didn't look back at the displays that would be standing there until time eventually rotted them away. Not even a glimpse back at her own. She didn't need to; the vision would always be in her memory.

Children, parents, _people, _running. _Her_ voice, echoing and taunting.

It gave the girl reason and determination, more now than ever, to get the hell out of Aperture.

And more than enough vengeful anger with which to eventually face GLaDOS.


End file.
